Learning Curve
by ruth baulding
Summary: It is a poor student who does not thereby also teach his master. Scenes from Anakin's early apprenticeship, set in the Legacy AU. Chapter 2: Anakin applies for a piloting license.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

* * *

 **In Absentia**

Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi trudged along the familiar corridor, worn nerf-hide boots pacing out its length with ruminative care, his stride subtly adjusting to a rhythm at the precise median between eagerness and reluctance.

It was good to be home; or rather, it was good to be here, on the _cusp_ of being home. Actually crossing the threshold into _arrival proper_ would entail… well.

It would entail explanations, and apologies.

However, the universe – and the universal vivifying Force that pervaded it, sustained it, bound all things together within it – seldom permitted any one of its sojourners to linger upon the path between past and present for more than a heartbeat's indulgence in introspection. Almost before he had formulated the thought, time and his feet had conspired to carry him past the point of anticipation and headlong into fact. The door to his quarters slid open upon silent pistons, light spilled into the mercifully hushed and dim passageway, flooding over his scuffed boots in an affronted puddle - and then he was abruptly confronted with the but slender undeniably _fierce_ silhouette of his young padawan.

"That was a really _choobazzi_ long time, Master!" the boy greeted him, accusation fairly bleeding from every syllable.

Obi-Wan's brows hovered upward toward an ironic arch. "It is good to see you too, Anakin."

The Force warmed instantly, that strange yet somehow _reassuring_ prickle felt along his nape, deep in his marrow, manifesting itself as mental shields dropped a trifle on either side. The young Knight could feel his learner's silent exhale as a loosening of the knot below his own ribs. He shouldered past, noting the thrust of Anakin's lower lip, the stubborn wrinkling of his snub nose.

"Like _months and months!"_ the tow-headed boy added, clarifying his indictment .

The accused man tossed his cloak over the nearest meditation cushion, deliberately ignoring the mess of circuitry presently occupying the place where his apprentice's backside should by rights have taken up habitual residence. "How time flies," he quipped back, deadpan.

Anakin's arms folded themselves across his small chest, in eerie imitation of his mentor's favorite aggravated posture.

It required a supreme act of will not to instantly mirror the stance. Obi-Wan deliberately hooked both thumbs through his belt instead, shoulders gratefully sagging downward a notch. "Padawan," he began.

But his apprentice was never one to wait for the first strike. "How could you do that?" he demanded, prepubescent voice thinning to a pained squeak. "You just _left_ and you didn't say why and then you never came back and then – "

"I _came back_ just now," the young master protested.

 _And how very narrowly I escaped never coming back, I shall not tell you._

Anakin read the thought clearly, however. "You almost got killed!" he shouted, irate.

"It happens," Obi-Wan reminded him, brows beetling together. _The Force is not a nursemaid._

"Without me!" the boy added, abruptly flinging himself forward and wrapping both arms about his teacher's waist.

The embrace was aggressive – and nearly overbalanced its recipient. Stumbling backward a pace, the young Knight hesitantly returned the unbecoming display of affection. Memory – a harmonic overtone echoing from the distant past – plucked at heartstrings dull from exhaustion. There had been a time when….

"It's all right," he soothed the furious and now _sobbing_ boy. "The Force was with me and I am back, and – " a swift, assessing glance about their disorderly environs, "- there will be a full reckoning made for all malfeasance committed in my prolonged absence."

Anakin stiffened beneath his protective hold.

"….Tomorrow." He hadn't the gumption to play _disciplinarian_ this evening.

The taut bundle of tunics and tousled hair quickly got itself in hand again. Anakin swiped one hand across his nose and then wiped it on a hem – provoking a wince in the spectator – then straightened his spine manfully. "I'll make you some tea, Master," he offered, brightening . "I can tell you're wiped out."

A grave nod. "Thank you."

They parted ways, one trotting eagerly toward the kitchen nook while the other marched resolutely into the suite's larger bedchamber and sank down upon its ascetical sleep cot with a stifled groan.

Surely his boots were fashioned of _lead,_ Obi-Wan vaguely mused, pulling off one offending item and then the other. The unfastened buckled drooped like panting tongues, the scuffs and scars along the leather outers a testament to his _harried_ adventures. He rolled backward onto the mattress – one vertebrae at a time, _this is moving meditation, not an ungainly sprawl –_ and closed his eyes, breathing in the living Force, the peace of _home._

Qui-Gon Jinn's presence _saturated_ the small space, the trace of his aura as distinct as the sharp tang of wet earth after rain.

The young Jedi frowned over this for one moment, uncomprehending, then plummeted into dreamless sleep.

* * *

"I made tea last night but you _passed out_ ," Anakin said, the accusatory tinge in his voice ameliorated by amusement.

There was and never would be anything as delightful to a Jedi padawan as the spectacle of his intimidating and omniscient mentor reduced to infantile exhaustion, Obi-Wan reflected. He may as well permit the boy his moment of smug enjoyment. "My thanks anyway," he replied, solemnly accepting the freshly filled ceramplast bowl thrust into his open hands.

He had made neither apology nor explanation yesterday; he owed the padawan both.

"My pleasure," Anakin smiled, happily tucking into his breakfast.

The brew was _exquisite,_ a bled of tapir and some other, more exotic leaf, light on the tongue but teasing the senses with an aftertaste of honey, or… _wait a moment._

"Who taught you to make tea like this?" he asked, astounded.

"Master Qui-Gon sir."

"Oh." Yes, of course. How long had his absence extended? Days had unraveled into weeks, and then… "He stayed here with you." That would explain the lingering resonance within the Force.

Anakin colored slightly, keeping his gaze resolutely fixed upon his grain porridge. "I know I was supposed to go to Master Troon's dorm, but all the other kids… I mean _initiates…_ they think I'm weird and you know…. I just…. it was Master Qui-Gon's idea!" he ended, defensively. "He said… never mind."

Qui-Gon would have known… he would have _sensed_ – on more than one occasion – how very perilously close to never coming back his former student had come. He would have felt duty-bound to take Anakin under his wing. Perhaps permanently.

"Anakin – "

The boy shook his head , emphatically. The topic was uncomfortable. _Frightening._

Obi-Wan finished his tea, and ran a hand through his overgrown hair. _If something does happen to me, though, I must not leave Anakin's fate to the Council._ Dooku was waiting in the wings, fascinated by the boy's raw talent, by the hushed implication that he might be _Chosen,_ the child of prophecy, the doomsday harbinger of ill or good for his generation and many to come.

"I am glad you had a mentor and friend in my absence," he said, a chill cascading down his spine.

"He said he was getting too old to have a padawan," Anakin muttered.

Obi-Wan set his bowl down, grasping at levity. "He is." A brief smile. "And so, I have arrived to rescue him from the burdens too great for his encroaching senility to bear. First order of business: why are our quarters a slovenly scrapheap?"

This was more to both their tastes. Anakin offered him a pert smile in return. "'Cause I've been building a _droid_ to help Master Qui-Gon out with all the stuff he's too old to do."

The man's former padawan raised both brows. "Such as?"

"Cleaning up and stuff. Taking care of his plants. Making him tea. Whatever he wants."

"That is what a padawan is for, my young friend."

"Yeah, but he's _too old_ for a padawan, remember, Master?"

Obi-Wan chuckled dangerously. "Does Master Qui-Gon _know_ about this droid servant?"

"Well, not exactly. Not that it's for him and all. I wanted it to be a surprise."

The young Knight felt his appetite return. " I advise you to keep it that way." He spooned a generous helping of grainmeal into his dish, then pointed the utensil and a magisterial glower at his wayward apprentice. "And these rooms will be _immaculate_ within one hour."

"Yes, Master," Anakin peeped, jumping up from his place at table with a pleasing alacrity.

* * *

"So… how come you were gone so long?" Anakin ventured, half-trotting to keep pace with his teacher. They passed beneath the soaring arches of a connecting hall, and swept up a broad stairway between shafts of filtered light.

"I did not expect to be absent more than a few days," Obi-Wan told him. "Truly. The mission…."

 _How to explain?_

" It went to the hells?"

"Language."

"Sorry, Master."

The junior level salles were bustling at this midmorning hour; saber instruction and refereed sparring matches occupied every available corner. "We'll find a space on the upper floors."

"I've been practicing," Anakin declared. "Wait till you see my new skills."

"I am all anticipation." The Knights' dojo was incense-laden, spacious and older in design, practice rooms connected to a second-level observation plaza, connected by broad passageways below. They headed toward the west facing side at a brisk clip, both eager for the demonstration.

The last doorway on their left was occupied by a tall figure radiant in the Force., slivering mane flowing past shoulders unstooped by age.

Obi-Wan stopped, a solar warmth suffusing the Force.

"Master Qui-Gon sir!" Anakin greeted the senior Jedi, skipping in place before he recalled his Jedi dignity and made the obligatory bow. "I'm gonna show Master Obi-Wan all the stuff I learned!"

The tall Jedi master waved a hand at the salle's entry. "Go warm up," he ordered, sending the enthusiastic padawan scampering within.

"Master."

Qui-Gon's ivory cassocks fell in regal folds to the polished floor, their hems somewhat marred by a tell tale stain of soil here and there, the faint darkening of a 'saber blade's near-miss grazed along one sleeve. Retirement suited the maverick master well; he was as cavalier in his disregard for its inherent limitations as he had ever been of the Council's and the Code's strictures. He chuckled now, stepping forward to grasp his young friend firmly by both arms. "It is good to see you, Brat."

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to speak but found words elusive.

"You should take the boy next time," Qui-Gon advised, in a low tone.

Preposterous. "I _barely_ survived as it was, Qui-Gon. It would be foolish to – "

" - Go without him. You should have confidence in his ability."

Obi-Wan released a short breath of disbelief. "Master, you cannot be- "

"I am, though. Quite serious. If you believe the Force intends you to be together, master and padawan, then you must take it at its word. Let the boy accompany you."

"He might easily have been killed."

But the tall man merely tilted his chin up, short silver beard bristling. "So might you have. But the Force shows us a way, even when we cannot find it ourselves. Am I right?"

The younger Jedi admitted temporary defeat. "As you say, Master."

Qui-Gon released him, eyes twinkling. "I am glad that lesson has stuck, anyway."

A soft snort as they ducked beneath the low lintel together. "And thank you for taking my padawan during my absence. He… needed guidance while I was away."

They paced across the time-worn floorboards. "More than you know. I think you underestimate your role – even in regard to the boy's presence here in Temple. If he is not _with you,_ then I fear he is without a proper place at all. And that is dangerous."

 _The other initiates think I'm weird._ Dooku, waiting in the wings, fascinated…. The Council circle, aloof and wary, words of an ancient prophecy hanging like stale incense in the Force.

Obi-Wan halted at the salle's far end. "I will meditate upon it."

A broad hand brushed over his shoulder. "Besides, I am getting too old for this sort of thing."

They spared a quiet laugh together at that, and settled upon a bench to witness Anakin's display of swordsmanship.

* * *

"I was great, huh, Master?"

"A Jedi does not crave adulation, young one."

"That means yes," Anakin blithely interpreted, satisfaction springing in his every step.

"You have made much progress while I was away." Obi-Wan pushed the lift activation panel. Humor quirked one corner of his mouth upward. "Perhaps I should routinely make a lengthy hiatus, for the sake of your education."

But the jest came too soon on the heels of perceived abandonment. Anakin's mood instantly imploded. "That's not funny, Master. "

The lift doors sealed them in burnished silence.

An apology was still in order. "Anakin – "

"You still didn't tell me _why_ you were gone so long, Master. What were you _doing?"_ The boy addressed the far wall, petulance shadowing his eyes, pulling his mouth into a straight and displeased line.

Obi-Wan sighed. "I cannot tell you. Or anyone. The mission was _classified."_

"But I'm your – "

"Only Master Yoda, Master Windu, and Chacellor Valorum know the details. And I swore not to divulge any relevant information. "

"Even to Master Qui-Gon?" the padawan grumbled, smudging the polished floor with one boot-toe.

"Yes. He didn't ask, because he understands." A pointed pause.

The lift lurched softly as it reached the fourtheenth level concourse. Anakin's shoulders hunched. "It's still not _fair."_

 _The Force is not a nursemaid, and .."_ We come to serve; service means we must sometimes renounce what we consider our _fair share."_

The boy shrugged this platitude off, and stalked along the corridor a pace ahead of his master.

" _Anakin."_

The disgruntled padawan turned, eyes like newborn stars _burning_ with a peculiar hurt.

Explanation was forbidden, but apology surely was not fettered by the same constraints?

He dropped to one knee, bringing them to eye level. "Padawan, understand this: I will do what I must, and this mission was no different. But I am still sorry that my path carried me so far away and for so long. I owe you far better, and I ask your forgiveness."

The boy's face stilled, resentment fading into mere childish relief. "It's okay," he hiccupped. "Master."

A halting pace or two forward, and he was close enough to touch. Obi-Wan fingered the tufted end of his apprentice's plait. " You will accompany me next time, regardless of circumstance."

Anakin nodded, sobering. "Promise?"

"I give you my word." Obi-Wan stood, hand resting on 'saber's hilt.

"All right, then," his padawan decided, falling into place beside him. "I hope it's somewhere totally _wizard."_

And they walked on, picking up where they had left off, without missing a step.


	2. Chapter 2

**Learning Curve**

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

 **Fast Lane**

"But _why_ do I have to go through all this _schuzzo_ rigamarole?" Anakin objected, appalled gaze sliding down the lengthy placard like drool dribbling down a Hutt's jiggling chins. "That's _stupid."_

Obi-Wan placidly overrode the local district office's door lock with a brief wave of one hand and ushered his frustrated apprentice inside. The drone of Coruscant air traffic was muted to a subliminal buzzing; dimmed interior lights replaced the sharp reflected glare of summer daybreak. "It may be the will of the Force that you occasionally submit yourself to _stupidity…._ For the sake of the greater good."

Several mutinous retorts formed themselves in the young padawan's mind, but he wasn't _stupid_ enough to voice them.

"I'm a better pilot than anybody here," he muttered beneath his breath. "Just saying."

"No doubt that is true," his mentor agreed, deliberately failing to draw the next logical conclusion, which was that _they didn't need to be here._

"Business hours are between nine and seventeen hundred," the brusque Sequelli behind the desk snapped, glossy eyes fixed upon her data-display. When the intruders merely continued to wait politely, she glanced up, squinting balefully at them for a moment before bolting out of her plastimold chair. "Oh! Master Jedi! Uh…. Can I help you?"

"No," Anakin murmured, sotto voce.

"Yes," his escort replied, in his best suave diplomatic tone. "We have an appointment with Druu Rexall."

"Oh," the receptionist grunted, one sucker-padded digit directing them toward a back office. "That way." Her curious regard shadowed their steps all the way to the threshold, where Obi-Wan banged politely upon the plastoid panel.

Anakin bounced upon his heels, all the while enumerating the multitudinous reasons he didn't need to be here.

"I bet _you_ didn't have to do this," he grumbled at the young Jedi's cloaked back.

"On the contrary. Master Qui-Gon made _me_ come here and _wait in line._ During business hours."

"So?"

"So I've had a healthy appreciation for the allure of the Dark Side ever since. The Department of Metrocivilian Vehicles is an excellent testing ground for basic spiritual resilience. You should be grateful I've made you a _fast track_ appointment." As an afterthought, he pounded upon the door again, this time with a balled fist.

"I don't _need_ a piloting license. I'm a _champion podracer._ I'm the only human who can do it."

"Well then. You are about to be the only human champion podracer legally qualified to pilot within the Coruscanti airlanes." The early hour lent a sardonic edge to Obi-Wan's drollery. "I'll have the additional encomia engraved upon your plaque later."

The subtle riposte was _unfair;_ Anakin chafed at the injustice of the cosmos in general and his master in particular, until the latter person made life interesting again : after two more fruitless attempts to request entrance by rapping politely upon the locked door, he lost his own considerable patience and simply wrenched the it open with the Force.

"Whoa!" A bacci-smoker's croaking voice bellowed from within. "You people ever hear of knocking?"

"We have an appointment," the young Jedi announced, sweeping over the threshold in a skirl of cloak.

Anakin strode in on his master's heels, hoping his own swagger had equal panache. The cubicle they had so summarily invaded was drab, its lusterless walls plastered here and there with travel holos now flickering and pixellated with age; the sagging desk groaned beneath a decade's accumulated clutter; the office's single occupant was an aging Dressalian whose beseeching eyes and lined, world-weary face begged the intruders to have pity and leave him to his own morose, pedestrian business.

Anakin felt a pang of something akin to compassion, but an upward glance at his companion revealed no corresponding softening of sentiment on Obi-Wan's part.

"An appointment," the Dressalian muttered, disgusted. His brows contracted as he squinted balefully at the young padawan. "Merciful gods… how _young_ do you people expect me to take em?"

"I believe, Mr. Rexall, that the legislative provision is clear: the Order's prerogatives are clearly delineated in –"

At this juncture Rexall's slumping posture abruptly rectified itself, and an impropriety escaped his lips – one carefully noted by the youngest member of the party, and stored in memory for future use. "Fine, fine," the harried civil servant snorted, exhuming a datapad from the precarious towers of junk upon his desk. One long finger curtly tapped against the screen. "Name," he barked.

A gentle pressure on Anakin's shoulder prompted his response. "Oh, uh, Anakin Skywalker."

"Age?"

"Ten standard."

Rexall glared at him, then at Obi-Wan, then at the datafield, but he abstained from further comment.

"And I assume you passed the written examination?"

The padawan puffed out his chest, taking exception to the Dressalian's patronizing and dubious tone. "Aced it," he said. "Any moron can memorize a bunch of stupid traffic rules and stuff. ..Ow," he added, when his blunt assertion earned a sharp tweaking tug upon his learner's braid.

"His exam certificate is already uploaded to the system," the young Jedi supplied. "We are here to complete the piloting test and to obtain his license."

"First things first," Rexall grunted, furiously tending to the demands of paperwork. "The fly-test isn't a walk in the park. Are you _sure_ you've logged sufficient practice hours in an airborne commuter vehicle, young sir?"

"I'm a champion _podracer._ I can fly anything," Anakin assured him.

Rexall rolled mournful amber eyes heavenward, then thrust his stylus at Obi-Wan. "You're riding along on this fiasco. No unaccompanied minors."

"Of course." A short bow.

"All right then." The Dressalian heaved himself to his feet and bumbled about in a drawer, eventually retrieving an ignition coder. "I'm not cutting you any slack on account of age, or being a Jedi," he warned the diminutive applicant.

"I don't need _slack,"_ the padawan grumbled, shoving hands into opposite sleeves and pursing his lips. This whole _mess_ was a big farce, far beneath his dignity and insulting to his intelligence – but it had been made abundantly clear to him – during a protracted lecture back at the Temple – that this was one routine rite of passage from which he would not be exempted.

"Remember," Obi-Wan quietly advised him as they trailed Rexall down a dingy back passage leading to the outside docking ports, "We do _not_ want to have to return and take a _retest."_

"Don't worry, Master. This is gonna be _easy."_

* * *

Druu Rexall flicked his last bacci-stick stub over the air-car's scuffed and battered side before double checking his safety harness latch. "Take 'er away, kid. Merge into that upper tier lane and proceed toward the Tarkall Loop."

Beside the jaded Dressalian, Anakin's golden head bobbed up and down once, before the vehicle shot forward at a sickening angle, accelerating recklessly off the docking platform and corkscrewing upward through the first six free-fly zones and then dropping with a gut-lurching precision exactly one half meter off the repulsor-array of a laden grav-trolley on the highest level.

"Whoooooop!" the daredevil in the pilot's seat hollered, apparently having forgotten the preceding lecture and any other lecture delivered within living memory on the topic of _safety regulations._

The Dressalian pried hands away from his face, facial grooves starkly limned by a nauseous pallor. "Chiiiiiisskkk!" he remarked, gripping the sides of the passenger seat in abject terror.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan quietly admonished from the back row, "You are tailgating."

"Oh, right. Sorry." The child backed off the accelerator a fraction, leaving a substantially less deadly closing space between their flimsy government-issued conveyance and the seventeen mega-glokk tractor trailer immediately antecedent. "Three second rule. Right."

Drexall sucked in a quavering breath. "Take the next exit, " he wheezed, still grasping at _authoritative._

"Okay."

But the next exit was a typical rush hour pile-up; Anakin skimmed by, taking the opportunity to pass the massive freight barge on the left, sideways, fast enough to peel off paint.

"Gods save me!" the DMV test proctor shrieked.

"It's okay, I got this," the diminutive applicant assured him, laying on more speed as he jinked and juked his way through the clotted lanes, making a headlong dash for the _next_ exit.

"Closed for construction," Obi-Wan remarked, casually, as they passed a holoboard proclaiming the city's sincere regrets for the protracted inconvenience and threatening double citation fines for any violations of the resultant strictures on speed and mobility.

"Well, _fark,"_ Anakin grumbled, a sentiment echoed in moaning undertones by his cringing passenger.

"Language, Padawan."

"Sorry, Master…. But where in the – I mean, where am I supposed to get off?"

They dropped to the carpool lane, which sucked them into a vortex of disgruntled morning commuters, all clamped in the vertiginous embrace of a mag-guidance tunnel cutting through the planet's underlevels for several hundred klicks; at the terminus of this shortcut they were vomited up into one of the outlying industrial sectors amid a hurricane of cargo vessels and construction droid hover-trams.

"E'chuta!" a helmeted crew boss screamed as Anakin hurtled beneath him and cut a corner between his transport and an oncoming claw-crane carrier.

"Same to your family," the towhead snarled, twisting aside at the last moment before impact against a looming monolith of transparisteel and plastoid.

"Power generator!" Obi-Wan barked, enough command in the tone to arrest the attention of a rabid Whipid.

"Huh?" his protégé answered. Then, "…oh, right."

They avoided electrocution by a hairsbreadth – to a Force user, the vast abyss between actual and possible, but to an ordinary mortal a distance too miniscule to be registered. Drexall's screams of terror could be heard above the deafening thrum of the hundred meter generator pylons and the snap of titanic violet lightning erupting between them.

"Mercy," the poor civil servant whimpered. "Just….. dock. Anywhere. Please…. Please…."

"Okay." Anakin flipped the air car round in a tight loop-de-loop, pushing the decompensators a bit over median at the end, just for fun, and brought them to a spinning halt on the tip-top summit of the nearest scaffolding. "Voila!"

His winning smile and the youthful blush upon cheeks still soft with baby fat did nothing to brighten the Dressalian's outlook.

"Parking brake," Obi-Wan reminded the boy, as the grav clamps started to slide, bringing them a precarious half-meter from the edge.

"Oh, right. Got it." Anakin turned round in place. "I'm doing wizard, huh, Master?"

Rexall's hands shook as he attempted to fill out the forms on his hand-held 'pad. "I need a smoke," he muttered. "A smoke…."

"Those things are really _choobazzi_ bad for you," Anakin informed him, small arms crossed over his chest.

"Here." Inexplicably, Obi-Wan produced a small packet of pink cheroots from a belt pouch. Drexall accepted the gift with feeble but heartfelt grunts of gratitude.

"Hey! Where'd you –"

"Dex. I confiscated them from him before he gave himself a pulmonary carcinoma. "

"But, Master…. –"

"Not now."

Choking clouds of smoke rose into the buzzing, pollutant laced air. Drexall slumped back against the passenger seat. "Master Jedi." A long inhalation, a longer exhalation, mauve wisps twining upward like incense, making Anakin sneeze. "Please exchange places with your student. And get us the hells back to the office."

Crestfallen, Anakin clambered into the backseat while his mentor nimbly replaced him at the helm.

"We come to serve."

The Dressalian snorted out a cynical magenta cloud through both nostrils. "Is that what you people call it?"

"Did I pass?" the padawan enquired as Obi-Wan deftly lifted them off their rickety eyrie and ascended to the maximum free-fly altitude, skimming gracefully and slowly along above the grimy miasma below in a straight as-the-mynock-flies line for the Department substation office.

But Dru Rexall made no answer at all.

* * *

Once he was firmly ensconced in his dilapidated native environs, some of the color returned to the Dressalian's face, and some of the trenchancy to his demeanor. Long fingers jabbed and thrust at data fields as he scowled over the Department computer display, long mouth turned down in a double bend of disapprobation.

"So… did I pass?" Anakin repeated, fidgeting before the inquisitor's shabby desk.

Drexall made a noise halfway between a snort and a hysterical giggle. "Pass?"

"We understand you are able to issue a license immediately, once the exam is complete," Obi-Wan prompted, waiting patiently behind his eager padawan.

The overburdened Department officer straightened, deepset eyes sparking with affront. "Pass?" he exclaimed. "Ha! No, you did not _pass._ What kind of responsibility would I be demonstrating toward law and society if I issued _you_ a piloting license? Hmm?"

Anakin's brows beetled together. A hot retort swelled in the Force like a bubble, and burst –

But before it could issue into speech, Obi-Wan smoothly intervened. "We understand, Mr Rexall. And we appreciate your sense of civic virtue." A small bow, softly gilded with irony. "We shall conform to protocol, and return in two weeks time for a retest."

Anakin's protest and Drexall's apparent relief mingled in the Force like oil and water, an uneasy and sinuous admixture.

"….And two weeks again, after that, and so on and so forth…. I am certain that at _some point_ in the future Anakin here will manage to meet your exacting - and quite proper- standards."

The Dressalian's amber eyes widened into pools of molten dread as the implications of this promise sank in. His hands stilled in mid-air, poised above the final entry-field on the holo-display.

"Ah," he wheezed. "Ah… um….. yes…."

The padawan peered upward at his teacher, the furrows of resentment upon his forehead slackening along with his jaw. "Master!"

"Shush. We shall take our leave now, and thank you again for your time."

"No! Wait, ah…. Just a moment now…" The Dresallian frantically logged backward in the display queue, knobbly digits rapping out numerals and fixing identification prints into innumerable fields. "There are certain prerogatives…. Exceptions, you understand…. Jedi, as it were, ahem…"

He tapped a final field with a tremulous flourish and grinned weakly as the chit-printer stuffed in its lonely corner spat out a shining new license, replete with identification holo and all the stamps and insignia of special privilege afforded the Jedi Order. "Your license, young sir."

"Yipppeeeee!" Anakin's celebratory dance was not in accord with Jedi dignity, though the wicked gleam in Obi-Wan's eyes as he solemnly accepted the coveted prize on behalf of his learner might have arguably indicated a more egregious departure from the Precepts of Compassionate Conduct.

Still, Master Qui-Gon was not present to pass judgment either way, so the license was summarily and smugly delivered unto its new owner and the exhausted Dru Rexall left to collapse in a boneless heap upon his sagging chair as the Jedi departed in a double skirl of cloak and with a pronounced spring in their collective step.

* * *

Once safely upon the threshold, beneath the midday glare of Coruscant's artificially controlled atmosphere and the incessant roar of traffic, Anakin swayed with triumph.

"Told you that would be easy, Master."

"Put that chit where it won't get lost, Anakin."

The boy stuffed his new credentials inside a rumpled tunic. "I'm still the only human podracer. And now I'm the _youngest_ licensed pilot on this planet , too!"

Obi-Wan massaged a temple. "Yes, well."

They found their humble Temple transport still safely docked where they had left it, at the far end of the commercial plaza public transport bay.

"I'll drive!" Anakin offered, pride of accomplishment fanning his enthusiasm.

"No."

"But I have a _license!"_

Obi-Wan considered gravely.

For a long moment.

"…No," he decided, vaulting into the pilot's seat. "Come along."


End file.
